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William Trevor

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born

May 24, 1928 in Mitchelstown, County Cork, Ireland

genre

Literature & Fiction

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William Trevor grew up in various provincial towns and attended a number of schools, graduating from Trinity College, in Dublin, with a degree in history. He first exercised his artistry as a sculptor, working as a teacher in Northern Ireland and then emigrated to England in search of work when the school went bankrupt. He could have returned to Ireland once he became a successful writer, he said, "but by then I had become a wanderer, and one way and another, I just stayed in England ... I hated leaving Ireland. I was very bitter at the time. But, had it not happened, I think I might never have written at all."

In 1958 Trevor published his first novel, A Standard of Behaviour, to little critical success. Two years later, he abandoned sculpti...more William Trevor grew up in various provincial towns and attended a number of schools, graduating from Trinity College, in Dublin, with a degree in history. He first exercised his artistry as a sculptor, working as a teacher in Northern Ireland and then emigrated to England in search of work when the school went bankrupt. He could have returned to Ireland once he became a successful writer, he said, "but by then I had become a wanderer, and one way and another, I just stayed in England ... I hated leaving Ireland. I was very bitter at the time. But, had it not happened, I think I might never have written at all."

In 1958 Trevor published his first novel, A Standard of Behaviour, to little critical success. Two years later, he abandoned sculpting completely, feeling his work had become too abstract, and found a job writing copy for a London advertising agency. 'This was absurd,' he said. 'They would give me four lines or so to write and four or five days to write it in. It was so boring. But they had given me this typewriter to work on, so I just started writing stories. I sometimes think all the people who were missing in my sculpture gushed out into the stories.' He published several short stories, then his second and third novels, which both won the Hawthornden Prize (established in 1919 by Alice Warrender and named after William Drummond of Hawthornden, the Hawthornden Prize is one of the UK's oldest literary awards). A number of other prizes followed, and Trevor began working full-time as a writer in 1965.

Since then, Trevor has published nearly 40 novels, short story collections, plays, and collections of nonfiction. He has won three Whitbread Awards, a PEN/Macmillan Silver Pen Award, and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. In 1977 Trevor was awarded an honorary CBE (Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire) for his services to literature. Since he began writing, William Trevor regularly spends half the year in Italy or Switzerland, often visiting Ireland in the other half. His home is in Devon, in South West England, on an old mill surrounded by 40 acres of land.(less)

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Books by William Trevor

Average rating: 3.78 · 7368 ratings · 1137 reviews · 87 distinct works

	The Story of Lucy Gault: A Novel 361 avg rating — 1692 ratings — published 2002 — 19 editions	My rating:
	Love and Summer 345 avg rating — 1111 ratings — published 2009 — 18 editions	My rating:
	Felicia's Journey: A Novel 367 avg rating — 926 ratings — published 1994 — 18 editions	My rating:
	The Collected Stories 455 avg rating — 394 ratings — published 1992 — 7 editions	My rating:
	After Rain 416 avg rating — 370 ratings — published 1996 — 12 editions	My rating:
	Cheating at Canasta 376 avg rating — 406 ratings — published 2007 — 13 editions	My rating:
	A Bit on the Side 386 avg rating — 332 ratings — published 2004 — 16 editions	My rating:
	Death in Summer 361 avg rating — 265 ratings — published 1998 — 14 editions	My rating:
	Fools of Fortune by William Trevor, Francine Prose (Introduction) 392 avg rating — 226 ratings — published 1983 — 10 editions	My rating:
	The Hill Bachelors 411 avg rating — 169 ratings — published 2000 — 8 editions	My rating:

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Quotes by William Trevor

“I get melancholy if I don't [write]. I need the company of people who don't exist.”
― William Trevor

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“People run away to be alone,' he said. Some people had to be alone.”
― William Trevor, Love and Summer

tags: loneliness , people

8 people liked it

“As a writer one doesn’t belong anywhere. Fiction writers, I think, are even more outside the pale, necessarily on the edge of society. Because society and people are our meat, one really doesn’t belong in the midst of society. The great challenge in writing is always to find the universal in the local, the parochial. And to do that, one needs distance.”
― William Trevor

5 people liked it

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Short Stuff Poll #2: Pick our February short story author

Ursula K. Le Guin

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William Trevor

8 votes, 250%

Ralph Ellison

4 votes, 125%

32 total votes

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William Trevor

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Quotes by William Trevor

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Topics Mentioning This Author

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Books by William Trevor